Veteran pro-life nurse,Nancy Valko, detailed a variety of concerns in her outstanding rebuttal. Valko said she has witnessed how hospital ethics committee discussions have devolved from ‘what is right’ to ‘what is legal’.Valko knows from her work in the trenches, how deeply the health care industry has fallen into a death panel/ utilitarian mentality:

Back then, ethics was easily understood. We didn’t ever cause or hasten death. … We assumed that everyone had “quality of life”; our mission was to improve it, not judge it. Medical treatment waswithdrawn when it became futile or excessively burdensome for the patient — not for society. Food and water was never referred to as “artificial” even when it was delivered through a tube. Doctor and nurses knew that removing food and water from a non-dying person was as much euthanasia as a lethal injection.”

Johnson defends health care rationing as moral, already existent, and just in need of changing who the decision-makers are (she prefers her friends and government bureaucrats), saying:

“[Sarah Palin] refuses to accept a healthcare system where her parents or her child would have to stand “in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society‘ whether they are worthy of healthcare….For my money (and my health), I’d opt for the public panel any day.”

Johnson lacks a compelling moral argument, and resorts to ridicule (Palin has a “moose gun” instead of a college degree) and misinformation(Palin “would deny health insurance to 47 million”). Thank you Nancy Valko, for telling the truth!

Since I first started writing about medical ethics and serving on hospital ethics committees, I have seen ethics discussions evolve from “what is right?” to “what is legal?”